Massive Gaming - Final Fantasy XIV Beta

Because calling the game "Final Fantasy XI-2" might scare people away.

Final Fantasy XI doesn't really seem to get the respect or reverence that its due. It's one of the only console games to snare any level of success in the MMO market, and for its time, it was one of the prettiest and most solid MMO games out there, tailored for the truly hardcore, old-school player who remembers ye olde dayes of EverQuest. Granted, there were a bunch of issues with the game, but for the most part the good outweighed the bad, and thus it ate up practically all of my free time for about four to five years.

So, then, I was probably a natural fit when Final Fantasy XIV's beta opened up to the public. I had ideas going in that this game would be mostly for former players of XI, and for the most part I was absolutely right--XIV (at least in beta format) seems to have taken some of the best parts of XI, updated the graphics, and tossed in a few new tweaks to mechanics.

Character creation is standard fare, especially to people who have played FF XI. The original five races from XI are all back once again, only with entirely different names (Humes are now Hyur, Elvaan are now Elezen, etc). The real switch comes when you select your character's chosen vocation, which is divided into four Disciplines--Disciple of War, Disciple of Magic, Disciple of the Land and Disciple of the Hand. War and Magic, naturally, are your combative classes, while Hand and Land are your crafting classes. That's right, you can actually elect to be a crafter right from the get-go. There are even quests to help you elevate your crafting, but I'll touch on the crafting system later..

As you can see, this game is an absolute stunner. Next to Aion, this is quite easily one of the more gorgeous MMOs out there. Naturally, you would need a pretty beefy machine to run the thing in absolute full spec, but my GeForce 8800 GT was able to keep things looking pretty damn sexy as evidenced by the screenshot above, with framerates keeping to an acceptable level. There is a little bit of pain with all this graphical pleasure, however. There were a few times where I would enter what looked like a completely empty room, and then it would suddenly populate with life as NPCs and PCs alike would slowly fade in. Anyone who's played FF XI (and especially walked to the auction house) knows exactly what this is like, but by today's tech standards this is probably a sour point for many. If you ask me, considering how detailed everyone in the world is crafted, I'm not surprised by this phenomena.

Combat has been mercifully changed for the better since XI. Where before you simply auto-attacked until you had built up the Tactical Points (TP) to unleash a weaponskill, here you select standard attacks yourself, which build up TP to activate stronger attacks. Whether these attacks consume TP or not, they all take chunks out of a continuously refilling Stamina gauge, which makes you pace your shots carefully and allows you to pick the damage type that'll best do the job. It definitely is a more engaging way to fight.

Questing comes in two flavors--the standard quests which progress the narrative, and "guildleves", which are you standard "Kill X enemies" fare. The way the two are separated is actually cleverly done--guildleves are explained as open contracts for adventurers, allowing you to grind up levels without any direct connection to the central plot. This is actually a great change up from many MMO's attempt at making you believe that the fate of the world hinges upon you getting six boar gizzards or what have you. The biggest gripe I have with the guildleve system, however, is the limit on how many can be done in a given day. You apparently can only have as many as four or five at one time, and that's really it. You have to either wait a full day for new ones to become available, or you simply wander the wilds and slaughter random baddies. There has been mutterings that this will be changed come launch day, which I sure hope is the case. Nothing's quite as aggravating as hitting some dev-enforced wall.

As you quest along, you gain two seperate levels--your physical level, which allows you to allot points to physical stats and magical defenses, and your class rank, which unlocks new tactics and attacks for your chosen class or vocation. This is probably one of the single best changes to XI's original system. Originally, if you chose a certain race, you were pretty much shoehorned into a specific role. Granted, it was possible to make a Tarutaru Paladin, but you had to work at it to get the proper gear, and you still could never tank quite as well as a Galka Paladin. With this system, you can give points to that little Lalafell midget's strength, agility and so on without having to rely on stat-boosting gear, or suffering through the lower levels because your race isn't inclined towards melee combat.

Another huge and welcome tweak is the ability to change classes on the fly. Granted, you were capable of doing that in FF XI, but you had to go to a Mog House and change your job outright, which stomped you back down to level 1. Don't like using a sword as a Gladiator and would rather poke things with a spear as a Lancer? Simply buy a spear and equip it. Your class rank changes depending on the weapon you wield, without it affecting your physical level. Essentially, you can have one character experience a broad range of classes if you want. It's a level of freedom that's unprecedented in other MMO's.

So that's the pros...and there are a lot, to be sure. But, naturally, there are some cons as well. One of the larger ones to newer players is the abject lack of handholding. When you start, you're already on a beginning quest that does a good job of acclimating you to some of the game's mechanics and pointing you to areas of interest in your chosen starting city. However, once you complete that quest, you're cut loose. No NPC direction, no floating exclamation points, no nothing. It can be rather jarring, especially to someone who's more used to WoW's way of doing things where you walk into an area and are besieged by exclamation points...but the way I see it, you either can get aggravated with the idea and ragequit, or you can suck it up and get some grind on with guildleves. This pretty much was the tone with XI, and it looks like XIV follows the same trend. Personally, I like that--I like having to figure things out, or having to pay attention to quest lines to know what to do next, or even just being let loose to do my own thing. Others might not feel the same way, though, so player beware.

The second major con is lag. Now naturally, this being an open beta, one expects a delay or a moment of lag as the devs see how their servers operate at load. That said, it gets annoying as hell when you're attempting to buy or sell things to a vendor and there's a two second pause between you selecting a command and the command actually being done. Hopefully some of this will be alleviated by launch.

Another con is the crafting system....but this is really a personal con more than anything else. Crafting in XI involved you collecting materials and various elemental crystals, then combining these things in a "synthesis" to transmute items out of thin air. XIV has the exact same system going on for it, though this time you're able to take up guildleves that help greatly increase your crafting class rank. I hated the crafting mechanics in XI, and I don't see me liking them again in XIV. That said, if you liked it before, then you'll feel right at home.

Finally, there's no PvP game to be found. Perhaps this is something that will be added or otherwise revealed come launch, but I couldn't find anything even remotely like a PvP system. Frankly, I'm glad--XIV looks to be more about weaving a plot and having adventures with friends more than running around a battleground pwning noobz. Of course, not many share this sentiment, so if you're looking to hack at someone with a sword, find something else.

Overall, Final Fantasy XIV is definitely a more selective, more hardcore MMO experience. XI required you to work together with people, made you work to earn your levels and your gear, and made you feel incredibly proud when you pulled off a big quest line or got that excellent piece of equipment. XIV absolutely looks to continue that trend, and I couldn't be more excited. Anyone who had a great time in Vana'diel will no doubt love exploring Eorzea. For those looking for another version of Kalimdor, however, you're probably better off staying far, far away.